The big surprise of Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative conference at the Sheraton Hotel in New York last week was how strangely calming it was. You would expect to emerge begging for mercy from a three-day talkathon on the world’s most intractable problems emceed by history’s most garrulous president — especially if you were a survivor of one of his book tour gigs.

Could the post-Katrina mood swing take the heat off the bellicose Fox News brand?

Even though it is so familiar in our imaginations, it is still a wonderful moment in the upcoming Discovery documentary “The Flight That Fought Back” when the doomed passengers on Flight 93 seize the food cart and race it down the aisle toward the cockpit like a battering ram, united in courage and rage. At the preview of the movie at the Bryant Park Hotel in Manhattan you could feel the exhalation of tension in the audience during the reenactment: the wish-fulfillment, the satisfaction at the virility of the gesture.